Target scrubs plan for ‘super’ store in Turlock

Rather than confront a likely rejection by city officials, representatives of Target abruptly withdrew their application to convert the company’s Turlock store into a Super Target.

The withdrawal immediately followed the release of a Planning Commission report that recommended the application’s rejection.

Target had applied for permits to expand its grocery section beyond what the city allows under its “big box” ordinance enacted in 2004.

The law restricts discount stores larger than 100,000 square feet to using no more than 5 percent of their space for nontaxable — i.e. grocery — items.

The ordinance was used to stop Walmart from building a Super-center in Turlock. Walmart sued to overturn the law, but the city successfully defended it in court.

Smith’s employees ratify Contract in New Mexico

Smith’s employees represented by UFCW Local 1564 in New Mexico ratified a new four-year agreement covering 2,000 workers. Smith’s is Local 1564’s largest employer.

The agreement covers 26 stores and 11 fuel stations. Health insurance was the major issue in the negotiations.

High court to rule on class action in Walmart suit

 The United States Supreme Court has agreed to rule on the largest employment class-action suit in the country's history, one that involves 1.5 million present and former female employees of Walmart.

The suit, on behalf of all women employed by the giant retailer since 1998, alleges pay discrimination and lack of opportunities for promotions.

The court will not decide whether the women were victims of discrimination, but rather whether a single suit encompassing thousands of stores throughout the country is proper.

The case is scheduled to be heard in the spring.

UFCW applauds new food safety law

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Unions across the country joined rallies in Wisconsin protesting anti-worker legislation.

Uproar over Wisconsin bill compared to Egyptian revolt

Democracy Rising

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s bid to strip collective bargaining rights from state employees ignited a fire -storm of protests by labor unions and their allies across the nation.

The protests also focused on proposed anti-union laws in several other states, including Indiana, Ohio, California, New Jersey, Michigan, Tennessee, Iowa and Alaska.

Pro-union demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin’s capital, prompted several observers, including conservative U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), to compare the protests to the revolt that over threw Egyptian President Hosni  Mubarak earlier in February.

Someone in Egypt contacted a restaurant in Madison to order a pizza to be delivered to workers demonstrating outside the Capitol, the Politico website report - ed.

“It’s like Cairo’s moved to Madison these days,” Ryan said on MSNBC. As if to underscore Ryan’s statement,

Similar calls came from Korea, Finland, New Zealand, China, Denmark, Australia, US, Canada, Germany, England, The Nether - lands, Turkey, Italy and Switzerland.

Meanwhile, the Republican leadership of Wisconsin’s legislature was stymied in its attempts to pass Gov. Walker’s anti-union legislation, as all 14 Democratic members

of the Senate left the state in order to deny the quorum necessary to vote on bills.

Democratic legislators in Indiana used a similar tactic, trans porting themselves to nearby Illinois to fend off a “right to work” bill that would hobble union solidarity in Indiana.

Republican leaders subsequently dropped the proposal on the urging of Gov. Mitch Daniels.

In related developments:  An Indiana deputy attorney general was fired after he used his blog to urge Madison police to use “live ammunition” to clear the area around the Wisconsin Capitol of pro-union demonstrators.

 In Columbus, Ohio, pro-union activists protested a bill pro posed by Republican legislators that would deny collective bar gaining rights to public employees.

 In Sacramento, California law makers introduced a bill that would do away with public employees’ rights to bargain collectively for pension benefits. The bill is seen as having little chance of passing the Democratic controlled legislature.

Writing in The New York Times, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said that Rep. Ryan was “more right than he knew” when he compared the events in Wisconsin and Egypt. “…what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible,” Krugman wrote. “It is, instead, about power.”